Imperfect Justice_ Prosecuting Casey Anthony - Jeff Ashton [38]
The group arrived at the jail at 7:30 that evening. They found Casey meeting with an attorney named Adam Gabriel, who at the time was associated with Jose Baez’s office. He was trying to convince her not to speak with anyone. The officers told Gabriel they were just escorting George Anthony to the jail at Casey’s request. If she wished to speak to George privately, they would facilitate that. They also told the attorney that he was allowed to sit in on the conversation if Casey wanted him to. Ultimately, it was Casey’s decision whether she wished to see her father and on what terms.
After waiting for ninety minutes, the investigators learned that Casey had changed her mind. She no longer wished to speak with her father, and George was returned home.
This was the last of the jailhouse visits. The family was sick and tired of having their private time with Casey all over everyone’s evening news. All four of them—George, Cindy, Lee, and Casey—decided that future communication would be through Jose Baez only. With that decision, the hope of either the family or the police getting any new information from Casey all but vanished, forcing everyone to hope that some truth about Caylee’s whereabouts could be extracted from Casey’s earlier statements.
CHAPTER EIGHT
THIRTY-ONE DAYS
While Casey’s family tried and failed to get new information from Casey in person following her arrest, the police continued to try and track down the leads she’d given them in any way they could.
In the weeks before Linda asked me to join the case, investigators had started piecing together a timeline of Casey’s actions beginning when she and Caylee left Hopespring Drive with their backpacks, on June 16, until thirty days later, when Cindy Anthony called the police, on July 15. (Casey called this period of time “thirty-one days” from her own recollection, so there’s a discrepancy with the actual number of days. Despite being incorrect, that number “thirty-one” became part of the case’s vocabulary, so we will refer to this time period of June 16 to July 15 as thirty-one days.) Not surprisingly, Casey’s version and witnesses’ stories did not add up. Deciphering fact from fiction and cross-referencing phone records with statements from the people involved, the investigators began the painstaking job of establishing a real day-by-day account of events. Casey’s deliberate deceptions had led them to believe they were almost certainly dealing with a homicide, although they still didn’t know the how, why, when, or where.
Caylee had last been seen on a Monday, June 16, 2008. Initially, on Cindy’s 911 phone call and for a few days after, there had been some honest confusion about that date, with Casey and Cindy saying that it was June 9 when she was last seen. Finally it was determined that Cindy had taken the toddler to visit her grandfather, Caylee’s great-grandfather, at an assisted-living facility on Father’s Day, Sunday, June 15. The following day, Cindy had left for work before Caylee was awake, but George and Casey each claimed to have seen Caylee alive for the final time.
On that Monday, June 16, George saw Casey and Caylee leaving the house at around 12:50 in the afternoon. She told her dad as they were on their way out that she was going to work and Caylee was going to the nanny’s. Casey was wearing dressy charcoal-gray pinstriped slacks and a beige blouse, while Caylee was dressed in a blue jean skirt, pink top, white tennis shoes, and white-rimmed sunglasses, her brown hair pulled back in a ponytail. Both Casey and Caylee were wearing backpacks; Caylee’s was white and decorated with little monkeys. As Casey explained to her father, she and